Starstorm Report #41: Kickin' it into Overdrive!

A couple of weeks ago we unveiled an all-new expansion for Awesomenauts, called Awesomenauts: Overdrive.

This expansion will launch in March 2016, and introduce some big new features and three brand-new premium 'Nauts to the line-up: Professor M. Yoolip (Ayla's time-travelling grandad), Chucho Krokk (the hyperbike-riding bounty hunter), and Jimmy and the LUX5000! These characters will launch in March 2016 and are now available for pre-order. Meanwhile all other features, plus an extra character will be free for all Awesomenauts owners!

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Now, keen observers will have noticed we're still not completely finished with all the features that we promised in the Starstorm campaign, and some will wonder why we're moving on to a new expansion when the first one isn't even finished yet. Don't worry though: those features are all still in the works, and we'll deliver them as promised!

In fact, the Starstorm map is currently in full production and will launch in a few months. You've been able to play the Alpha version of the Starstorm map for a while now, and we're working on the graphics for the map (see below for a work-in-progress preview) and polishing up some elements. The Starstorm map will be released in the weeks following the launch of the Overdrive expansion. As promised, the long-awaited digital art book will be created once the Starstorm map is complete.

Furthermore, the long-awaited matchmaking overhaul has been in development for well over a year now, and the pieces are finally coming together. We've conducted several successful tests here at Ronimo HQ in recent weeks, and it's looking to be a vast improvement over the current system. This will go live somewhere in the months following the launch of the Overdrive expansion, hopefully soon after. Once this system is in place it will finally open up avenues for us to work on the other online-features we promised back when the campaign launched. We can't make any promises on exactly when those will be done though, when development will start, and in which order they'll come.

We're not selling any of the Starstorm features as part of Overdrive. All content that we promised as part of Starstorm WILL release exclusively for Starstorm owners or will be made available to the entire community.

We think it is important for you, our Starstorm backers and long-time fans, to know that work on these Starstorm features is still underway and not in any way affected by the development of Overdrive. We strongly believe in the Starstorm features and they are an integral part of the long-term vision we have for Awesomenauts.

So, back to Overdrive! The new expansion is launching early March with three new characters at once, making it the biggest update we've ever done! Two of these characters are actually available in public Beta right now, so check out the new Beta to play matches with Professor M. Yoolip and Chucho Krokk. To find out how to access the Beta, head over to this thread on our forum: http://www.awesomenauts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=22487